I don't see any gaps in my DD's reading ability, either (she's also 8), and she was definitely quite whole-word in her approach. She is a phenomenal speller, too. Whatever her approach is, it hasn't led to any problems whatsoever. I have zero concerns about gaps. In any case, she suffered through plenty of phonics at school.
If you see that your child truly cannot sound out words, that's a concern. I think that's relatively rare, though.
My dd learned to read without instruction. She started memorizing books at 11 months old...storybooks not the one word per page type books. She would "read" the words on the page even if we skipped around to different pages out of order. She began reading CVC type words around 2yo while playing games with magnetic letters. She seemed to lose interest in going any further after awhile but still loved being read to and memorizing the books. At 3.5 she brought me the Little House in the Big Woods we'd been reading together and said she's do the reading and she read fluently with no difficulty on any of the words, proper inflecting, and using voices for the quotes.
I think she was a whole words reader but she also could sound out. She's a natural speller and if she happens to get a word incorrect, just needs to see it once to always spell it right. I used a spelling program for her with words listed according to phonics rules but she never spelled anything wrong so we stopped doing spelling.
I considered it reading when she was reading new words ie. when she brought me that Little House book and read it. The memorization and sounding out CVC type words were pre-reading skills (emergent reader) but not what I consider "reading."
